February 18, 2019

Neon Semantics: Dan Flavin @ Cardi Gallery, Milan

Fashionistas heading to Milan Fashion Week in the next few days and who may want to get a rest from the relentless runways will find the opportunity to do so at the Cardi Gallery.

The gallery (located in Corso di Porta Nuova 38),will be opening this week a solo exhibition dedicated to American Minimalist artist Dan Flavin (from 20th February to 28th June 2019).

Organised in collaboration with the Estate of Dan Flavin, the event features fourteen light works from the late 1960s through the 1990s that show the evolution over four decades of the artist's investigations into notions of colour, light and sculptural space.

Flavin started sketching works of sculptures incorporating neon lights in the early '60s while he was working as a guard at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He then transformed his sketches into "icons" which juxtaposed lights onto monochromatic, painted Masonite constructions. As the years passed he procceded to remove the support and left only the fluorescent lamps.

By 1968 the sculptures expanded into room-size environments and at Documenta 4 in Kassel the artist filled an entire gallery with ultraviolet light. The best thing about Flavin's pieces is the fact that the artist never tried to attach any symbolic value to them, but he claimed his works were simply fluorescent lights responding to a specific architectural setting, and about his art he just used to state: "It is what it is and it ain't nothing else."

Flavin has often been mentioned by fashion designers as an inspiration for their collections and has a special connection with Milan since in 1996, following an invitation from Italian priest Giulio Greco, he created a site-specific installation as the central element for the restoration and renewal of the Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa church, designed by Giovanni Muzio in the 1930s. After Flavin died, it was the Prada Foundation that made the project possible in collaboration with the Dia Center for the Arts and the Dan Flavin Estate. The exhibition at Cardi Gallery is accompanied by a catalogue that includes an essay by the esteemed Italian art critic (and Prada favourite) Germano Celant.